Internet Archive's in-browser video "theater" requires JavaScript to be enabled. It appears your browser does not have it turned on. Please see your browser settings for this feature.

Filmstrip: "The Art of Pantomime in Church"

by: Meriwether Contemporary Drama Service

Publication date: 1982

Contributor: Uncommon Ephemera

Language: English

Item Size: 5.7G

SOUND FILMSTRIP IS AN AT-RISK MEDIA FORMAT. I am the only person on earth preserving American filmstrips. The media format is largely forgotten and very endangered. If you have any American filmstrips, or can rescue any filmstrips from a school, college, business, industry, or elsewhere, please contact me immediately at uncommon.ephemera@gmail.com. Don't know what a filmstrip is? Read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filmstrip

I AM AN INDEPENDENT MEDIA PRESERVATIONIST. If you enjoy my work please consider making a donation toward my operating expenses. Visit https://uncommonephemera.org/donate for links to Patreon, GoFundMe, and more.

FULLY RESTORED. This is a sound filmstrip that has been fully restored into the included video which properly simulates how it would have been presented originally.

ORIGINAL SCANS AND AUDIO INGEST INCLUDED. The original frame scans and audio capture are included in this archive.

STAY IN TOUCH. Join my Discord for announcements on new releases and live streams, discussion with other people interested in media preservation, or if you can help in any way.

For more information about Uncommon Ephemera, filmstrips, my media preservation processes, file specifications, contact information, and attribution information, please see the included “Read Me.txt” file.

NOTES

If one were asked to think of two things that are as unrelated as two things could be, one would be hard-pressed to think of anything better than mimes and church. And yet, here we are. But, God is said to work in mysterious ways, and in this particular mysterious work from 1982 He introduces us to Randall Bane, who is apparently a mime; or at least he'd better be, because he's wearing an awful lot of makeup.

Since a mime is, after all, a terrible thing to waste, we press on and find out that his mime alter-ego, Obie Good (because, of course, Austin Powers' mime was already named Obie Hayve) has come up with a — wait, what do you call the things mimes do? A mimeformance? A dank mime? Mimecraft? — well, a performance, let's say, to go along with a poem called "Christ and I Love You." Because that's what poems need. Mimes.

Bane goes on to explain that the art of pantomime is just as natural in the church as communion and guilt, and then walks us through a set of mime warm-ups with a pair of assistant mimes (or as I call them, pantowan learners), and then we learn a hand motion that looks like a dove, which we are told is conveniently also useful to represent the Holy Spirit. We suddenly realize that this bit of ancient Mimecraft is what got him past the church secretary. Then, suddenly, the presentation ends with a mimeformance of Psalm 150, because of course it does.

Confused? So are we. But remember, Christ and the mime love you.

The Art of Pantomime in Church is part of the Contemporary Drama Service series and was published in 1982 by Arthur Meriwether Publishing. It carries the catalog number FS-33.